Native Drums
Explore the powerful symbolism of drums in African American culture, once tools of communication and resistance during the darkest times of slavery. We confront the lingering shadows of economic exploitation and the pervasive influence of media and religion in controlling black narratives. Let’s reexamine the role of the black church and its mission to fight systemic injustices, urging a return to prophetic ministries that prioritize humanity and community over material wealth. This podcast episode is not just a reflection of the past but a call to action for the future, urging us to build a more just and liberated world.
Native Drums
Beyond Privilege to Life Itself: Ralph Canty's 60-Year Fight for Justice in the American South
From the shadows of segregation to the frontlines of protest, Ralph Canty Sr. takes us on an extraordinary journey through the civil rights movement in Sumter, South Carolina. Born in 1945 just blocks from Lincoln High School, Canty emerged as a fearless young activist whose determination to dismantle racial barriers would forever change his community.
With remarkable clarity, Canty recounts the pivotal moment when he and two fellow students staged a sit-in at the Holiday Inn on July 27, 1963—an act that triggered immediate arrest and launched what became known as the "Sumter Movement." Despite opposition from both white segregationists and hesitant Black community leaders, Canty and his colleagues meticulously planned their strategy, understanding they might pay "the ultimate price" for challenging the status quo.
What distinguishes Canty's narrative is his nuanced portrayal of Sumter's unique racial dynamics. While segregation cut through town "like an apple pie," the community largely avoided the brutal violence seen elsewhere in the South, thanks in part to law enforcement leaders who maintained what Canty calls a certain "nobility" in their approach. This environment allowed for strategic civil disobedience that gradually eroded segregation's foundations.
Among the most fascinating revelations is Canty's simultaneous employment at a white-owned business throughout his activism. Despite leading boycotts by day and organizing protests by night, the Jackson family never fired him—a testament to both his exemplary work ethic and the complex economic interdependence that sometimes transcended racial lines.
Canty's story bridges past and present struggles for racial justice. Reflecting on the 2020 protests following George Floyd's murder, he observes a profound shift in focus: while his 1960s activism fought for equal privileges, today's movement fights for the fundamental value of Black lives themselves. This perspective offers a powerful framework for understanding how far we've come and the critical work that remains.
For anyone seeking to understand the courage it takes to stand against injustice, the strategic thinking behind successful movements, or the personal cost of fighting for change, Ralph Canty's testimony provides an essential, firsthand account of history in the making.
Thank you for being with us this morning. This interview will be recorded and transcribed and will become part of our collection our oral history collection at the University of South Carolina and also with our Center for Civil Rights, History and Research.
Speaker 2:Well, it's such a pleasure to have you visit the campus of my alma mater, lincoln High School, and my pleasure to have the opportunity to have this conversation.
Speaker 1:Let's begin by stating your full name and when and where you were born.
Speaker 2:I'm Ralph W Canty Sr and I was born here in Sumter, south Carolina, really not very far from this site, at 553 South Main Street, on October 9th of 1945.
Speaker 1:Tell me a little about the Cantu family, your parents and their background.
Speaker 2:My parents were ordinary hardworking people. My dad, by calling, was a clergyman, preacher of the gospel, but he was also, by craft craft, a blacksmith one of the last blacksmiths in this area. As a matter of fact, he built the gate at Morris College and we still cherish that contribution that our family made. For a long time my mother was a housewife and a supporter to local educators, because when I was a child there were very few cars around and we were fortunate to have one of those cars and my mother would drive many of the teachers to their schools each morning and on Sunday afternoons. For those who worked out in the in the county, she'd take them on Sunday, pick them up on on Friday. So we've been always Engaged.
Speaker 2:My Oldest brother was a graduate of Florida A&M and was a pharmacist. My second brother had a distinguished military career and was a Tuskegee airman and afterwards a deputy superintendent of a school system. And my next brother operated his own dry cleaners business before they began to fade off the scene. And, of course, I serve as a pastor and the owner of a local mortuary.
Speaker 1:What were your parents' names?
Speaker 2:Benjamin Franklin Canty Sr was my dad and Rena Smith Canty was my mother.
Speaker 1:Will you say a little bit about your educational journey, your earliest schooling on to college? Quite a journey, educational journey.
Speaker 2:your earliest schooling on to college. Quite a journey. My first three years were spent at Savage Glover Elementary School, around the corner from where we lived. That school was named for two African-American educators, miss Savage and Miss Glover, and Miss Maggie Glover, who lived right across the street from us, also partnered with my parents in giving me my name. So when I was in fourth grade we moved to the west side of town and I went to Liberty Street School and St Jude Catholic School and on to junior high school at Lincoln High School and I took a year away for private education up at Matheter Academy in Camden and then came back and graduated from Lincoln. It was quite a journey, quite a journey, and now I'm very grateful for that journey because I made so many friends by being in so many different schools.
Speaker 1:So, part of our task today is to learn more about the history of segregation and the challenges to that in Sumter. So we realize that we have limited time, so we will have some future conversations about your larger career beyond civil rights. So for those who may not know Sumter, how would you describe race relations in your earliest years and the system of segregation in Sumter?
Speaker 2:something deep, divisive, but at the same time it was so much a part of the life of the community where black people did not live and where they did not go unless they went there to work. There were places where we did not go. We knew that we couldn't go there and we never attempted to go. It was the culture, it was a part of life. The polarization, the isolation was so thick that it could be cut like an apple pie. But to see the hazing and the abuse and the violence that others saw where they resided. If I'm honest about Sumter, I never saw it. I didn't even see it during the civil rights movement and the nobility of the segregationist spirit in Sumter that was controlled and did not display itself in hostile manner except, I suspect, suspect in rare cases.
Speaker 1:In previous conversations on this issue about the perception of Sumter as a moderate town. You credit the Sheriff Parnell and Chief Strange and others as being law enforcement officers who set a certain tone.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:What was their tone?
Speaker 2:Well, they were definitely very strong people and I believe that they had very strong ideologies about the separations of the race started. A certain nobility emerged in their leadership that set them apart from law enforcement officers in other places. They were not of the demeanor of a Bull Connor and the lacks thereof. I remember the very first night of the war Two friends and myself sat in at the Holiday Inn in Sumter. It was a traumatic experience for all of Sumter White Sumter, white Sumter, black Sumter, and you would have thought we had conducted a mass killing of sort.
Speaker 2:Every city and county police that was on duty came rushing to the scene to pick up three college students and to take them to jail. But, mind you, I'll say this, doc, about those law enforcement officers they were not violent, they were not violent, they were not violent. They never assaulted us. We were insulted because they thought we should be arrested for asking for the opportunity to have a nice dinner at the Holiday Inn. But they did not assault us physically oh, there was the verbal abuse. And because they were excited, they really didn't know how to handle these young folk who were courageous enough to stand up against the system. So they hurried us away to the city jail and while they were processing us they were, oh boy, it was a whole lot of clamor in the room clamor, clamor, clamor. And when this elderly statesman walked in the room, the police chief, chief Strange. I heard him say all right, boys, we will not have that. And where there was excitement and clamor, there was absolute silence.
Speaker 1:So the police at that time were verbally harassing you, and then the police chief stopped it.
Speaker 2:They were not harassing us as much as they were, because we were in another room, but we could hear them. You know these so, and so you know taking over our town blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank. You know we could hear them, but they weren't verbally abusing us as such. But the point that I make is that when the chief came, the temperature, the temperament, the climate in the jailhouse changed radically.
Speaker 1:Let's look at this a little more closely. Okay, so July 27, 1963, 9.15 pm, ralph Waldo Canty, john Calvin Nelson, rosa Grace Denbo are arrested for trespassing at the Holiday Inn. That's correct. Let's go back. Why are you there and what motivated you to go to the Holiday Inn?
Speaker 2:That was one of the places where we could not go and we felt it was time for the walls of segregation in Sumter to come down and they needed to come down in a hurry. And they but that they would never come down unless someone pushed them down, force them down, forced a collision and a collapse. And that was why we were there. We weren't really hungry, not for the food, we were hungry and anxious for the privilege.
Speaker 1:Leading up to that moment, had there been planning and strategy sessions about what could or would happen?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, oh yes, tell us about that. Well, for a few months earlier, a group of college students five or six of them and myself I was an upcoming college student, I had just graduated from high school we met in the basement of Brawley Starks Hall on the campus of Morris College and carefully designed a strategic plan for the Sumter Movement. As best I recall, we had everything conceivable in that plan that might force a change in the climate in this community Restaurants, sit-ins at churches, wait-in at pools and other recreational areas, sit-ins in the middle of downtown beast and we understood that the results, the results might not have been pleasant at all. We understood we may have paid a great physical upon us making the sacrifice we made and we were willing to make that sacrifice, even if we had to pay the ultimate price.
Speaker 2:You and your colleagues discussed that oh yes, oh yes, we, we were quite aware of the danger of stepping into a hornet's nest.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes yes, so I imagine your parents and other folk in the community were also fully concerned about this hornet's nest oh my, oh my God.
Speaker 2:If I am honest with you, our leaders, our pastors, our business were extremely anxious about this whole idea. They knew it was time for the wall to come down. The white folk on one side of town were not ready for it to come down and the seniors on the other side of town weren't ready to push it down. So we had we had a problem with the establishment in the white community, but we also had a problem with the establishment in our own community and in large measure it was because of their and their fear that, well, anything could have happened.
Speaker 1:Did any of those older people say Ralph Cannon, now is not the time.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. I'm going to put this on the record. I'm going to put this on the record of First Baptist Church at the corner of Washington and Dangle Street in Sumter. I remember one of the pastors saying this is communistically inspired.
Speaker 1:An African-American pastor.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, it frightened them in their boots. Frightened them in their boots and, if I am honest with you, I don't know until this day if my parents would have consented for me to participate had it not been for the fact that, at the time, my mother had a nephew visiting with us from Baltimore, maryland to them let him go.
Speaker 2:Let him go, the change is coming. I remember his words. He said the change is coming. Let him be a part of the change. He will be all right. And I remember my mother looking at him and saying with tears in her eyes if you say so, he can go. The truth of the matter, sir, I was so belligerent at that time until, if they had said no, I would have gone anyway. I would have gone if I had lost my life that night.
Speaker 1:Reverend Cantor, were there any professionals, teachers or ministers who supported the movement and the work that you were doing?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, there were plenty, plenty of them. I cited the one person who, I think out of fear, made the statement he made because he just thought we were going too far. But, by and large, many, many of our leaders embraced to some extent what we were doing and of course, you know, when the Sumter Movement was organized, they became the leaders. They became the leaders and of course that was to ensure that we stay in check.
Speaker 2:Well, let's talk about a few of them, if you don't mind yeah tell me a little about your association with reverend randolph oh, um, pastor randolph uh was number one, a part of the earlier movement at morris. He was a recent graduate of Morris and there had been, back in 1961, an effort by the Morris College students to forge desegregation in some. He was one of them, and so, of all of the pastors, of all of the pastors, he was perhaps more sensitive and more genuine than any in terms of understanding our hearts. Of course, you know, first Baptist Church, the church where he served as pastor, became the headquarters for the movement and all of our activities were facilitated from that building.
Speaker 2:He and Reverend James Fred James, who later became a bishop, you know, and who headed up the social action division of the AME Church, and a number of others throughout the community, became quite engaged in the movement. Engage in the movement because it was, in our opinion, while it was just this little sumpter section of the world, to us it was a major movement.
Speaker 1:You mentioned the events at Mars in 1961. At that time, you were in high school here at Lincoln Right. Do you recall? Have any memories of the Freedom Rides riders coming through Sumter? Oh, yes, yes, yes I do I do?
Speaker 2:I remember Well, you know, I've been an activist all my life, all my life and and, like I said, I'm pastor Randolph and Freddie Williams and others from Morris and I were always in contact, even while I was still in high school another incident happens is almost a mere week or so after the Holiday Inn incident.
Speaker 1:Sumter had now become known as one of the cities in the South that had nighttime protests and demonstrations. Was there any particular motivation as to why these nighttime protests occurred in Sumter?
Speaker 2:Largely because it was a time when working people could be engaged. That was no other particular strategy. The Sumter Movement was designed in such a way as to attempt to engage the entire community. We would have public meetings at rural churches and a rural church might be 20 miles from town. But to ensure that everyone was getting the message and everyone was on board, we took our meetings to every corner of this county and we sought as much and got and got.
Speaker 2:Sir got as much participation from people, as we could and week by week, as they saw hey nobody got killed. The more folks started coming out and becoming involved.
Speaker 1:On August 6, 1963, 55 African Americans in Sumter are arrested, 39 of whom are minors, which I think included you, and it said it was led by two ministers, henry McGill and De Leon Felder. Do you have any memories of that protest?
Speaker 2:I vaguely remember that one, but I do remember Dr Felder and Reverend McGill. I do remember both of them.
Speaker 1:They were local ministers.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, reverend Felder was an AME minister, minister. Well, reverend McGill, here again, was a part of the 1961 movement out at Shaw, out at Morris, and by that time he was a pastor, but not here in Sumter County. He was operating a barber shop here, yeah.
Speaker 1:During the course of the movement? Were any particular teachers have an impact on you about your consciousness about civil rights? Social protest.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, a teacher who had the greatest impact on my life taught me history. Her name was Mrs White, and she helped me to understand history better than anyone ever did, and in doing so it fed my soul with the energy, the fuel, the food I needed to so that I would appreciate my own self-worth, and from that point I became more and more engaged in the struggle. There was then another teacher, my 12th grade year. In history, she was perhaps more practical than Mrs White. Mrs White was quite philosophical and deep, miss Ivy, and she too helped to get the fires burning. And there were other educators, parents of my friends, who supported the movement in such a way that encouraged us and pushed us forward. While they would not, or could not, come to the front lines, they did all they could to support us, those of us who were willing to go to the front lines.
Speaker 1:While you were engaged in the front lines, you actually were working for the Jackson family. Could you tell me about that relationship and what they did or did not do during the course of the Civil Rights Movement as it relates to you?
Speaker 2:Well, it's an amazing thing. It's an amazing thing. I worked for the Jackson family. The Jacksons had two businesses downtown Sumter Office, yeah, and Sumter office supplies. I worked in both stores. They were right, contiguous to each other. One was on one street, one was on the other, but you could come out of the back doors and into it. 1963. At the height of the movement. I'm sitting in at the Holiday Inn and at Crest and at Cartwright and I'm taking a lunch every day picking up a sign and walking down the street and protesting asking people not to shop in Sumter, and worked all summer for the Jacksons. And I'll never forget one day I was protesting down at Crest, leading the boycott, asking people not to go in the store, and two of the workers from something the office supply walked down the street hey, ralph. And into the store. So there was no question in anybody's mind that.
Speaker 1:I was the same.
Speaker 2:Ralph that was working in the store. They never said a word. They never mentioned the fact that I was so engaged.
Speaker 1:There were two reasons for it.
Speaker 2:I'm going to give you the two reasons. When I decided to terminate my employment, I went in to talk with the son and he was broken because, god man, we were just close. He said let me get Dad Ralph, this is not what we want to hear. So he went and got his dad and the two of them sat with me in the office and I told him it was time for me to go to college and I would not have the time to work. And so after the normal kind of exit interview, I said to them but you know, I really thought you all would have discharged me a long time ago, and this is what the old man said. He said, under normal circumstances or if I probably would have.
Speaker 2:But you were such a good employee, you were getting the work done and that's what was important to me. You did not neglect your job to do what you had to do socially and we respected that. You are a hardworking young fella and we appreciate you. So that was one thing. But here's the other thing. Business people are business people, people and they know what's good for business, because I was working for Sumter office supply. The Sumter movement bought all of its supplies, all of its construction poster boards, placards, pins, all of the supplies they'd need all summer. So they got over as fat rats. So it wasn't that they were so socially sensitive. They were good people, but they were also economically conscious.
Speaker 1:One name I want to make sure we mention because I know he played a very critical role in some of your arrests. Tell me about your connection to Ernest.
Speaker 2:Finney. So the justice was our legal advocate, never telling us not to, but always getting us out of whatever we got into. That's probably the best way I can say it. Akin said he and Ruben Gray and Matthew Perry teamed up in those days to ensure that we the best possible legal team a community could have as it fought for its freedom and independence.
Speaker 1:And I do want to say the same is true about local businessmen, and there were so many of them who put up property, who put up money to ensure that Attorney Justice Finney could bail us out when we needed to be bailed out. Do you recall some of those business people who did?
Speaker 2:just that. Oh yeah, there was quite a few. There was quite a few. There was Dr Williams BT Williams, there was Dr EC Jones, there was Mr Robert Palmer, there was Mr Charles Riley, there was Mr David Mallette. That's just a long list of them. Who was Mr Willie Singleton? Mr Willie Singleton was one of them. Mr Willie Singleton bless Mr Willie Singleton's heart. Mr Willie Singleton and his beloved Emma got caught up in the middle of one of our midnight experiences, but Willie was always there and he has given his heart to the advancement and development of this community and to our people. Yeah, we I guess you know that story Well one night I can't tell you the date, I can go back and find it someplace we, several of us were a little disturbed. We'd had a march that Sunday and some of our leaders about six of them broke out of the line, went to the Holiday Inn, as we had done some time ago, got arrested.
Speaker 2:At the end of our march, we went back to the church and rallied more, and so we decided we were going to go back. By that time we'd gotten word that they'd been arrested and we had decided we'd go down to the prison and sing a few freedom songs. That's what we were going to do, and I was leading the march. I was leading the march.
Speaker 2:The police pulled up with one of the leaders who was just placed in jail, and he gets out and comes to me and says �Ralph, please turn this guy off, this is a mob. This is a mob, we don't need this�. Well, we were not a mob, we had no intention of creating any kind of disturbance at all. But here again, that thing I talked to you about earlier, about having to deal with both sides, the law enforcement.
Speaker 2:folk and our leaders misinterpreted what our actions were, because they thought they had to do the thinking for us, and they did not allow us to do our own thinking, and so, rather than creating, a riot scene.
Speaker 2:I took the crowd, we turned around it was a couple hundred of us and then went back to the church.
Speaker 2:We sang a few songs, but some of us were just angry, were angry, and we left that church, went back to the headquarters church, first Baptist Church and First Baptist Church may have been at that time the only church or one of the only churches that still had an operating bell in its tower and we started ringing that bell. We started ringing that bell, ringing the freedom bell, ringing the bell. We must have started at about 8, 8 o'clock Sunday night. We rang that bell until way after 12 o'clock Sunday night. We rang that bell until way after 12 o'clock and we were ringing it and we were ringing it and when we knew anything, people could hear it all over town and folks, when we started hearing that bell, we knew something was going on. So we were praying and Willie Singleton and Emma, who lived out near Morris College, heard it, said them kids up to something. So we got to go down there and see, go down there and see about them.
Speaker 2:Well, by the time they got there there were just loads of policemen parked on the side and the boys were upstairs waiting. I'm standing on the outside and I'm talking to them in the window and I'm saying pull it, pull it, pull it, pull it. And the more I did like that, I think, the more the law enforcement people became angry, or angrier. And so after a while they got out of their cars and I told them boy, they're going to charge us, they're going to charge us, they're going to charge us. And then, just before they charged, emma and Willie pulled up. Emma was pregnant with her last child. And just after they got out of the car, this throng of police officers came rushing across the street. I dashed into the basement of the church and in the fury, got arrested except me, because you were in the basement Because you were in the basement.
Speaker 2:I was in the basement. They came in the basement. They came straight in the basement looking for me and when they had round up everyone else, I could hear one of them saying find him, find him. I think that might have been the night for me, but they never found me.
Speaker 2:The Lord, the Lord, sheltered me and I'm telling you, when they came into the basement, I was standing at a door looking right at them. When they charged the door, knocked the door down at the church, but they didn't see me. And after they were in the basement, a voice said to me get in that room, go in that room. To me get in that room, go in that room. I went in the room, did not close the door. It just happened to have been the pastor's study. It happened to have been the pastor's study and I got under the pastor's desk and took his chair and pulled it up to me. They came in the room. I saw their feet, but they never saw me. And when they started the final search, because they knew I was still in that building, they came back to that room and I heard one in the hall said no two of us have already checked that one.
Speaker 2:He's not in there and they did not come back and I was just covered. I was covered.
Speaker 1:A few more questions for you. So you graduate from Lincoln in 1963. Right, but you elect to stay in Sumter. Yes, what motivated you to stay here in Sumter and to attend Morris College?
Speaker 2:By the time I finished high school, dad was retired and his health had declined, and I did not want to leave him. I did not want to leave him. His heart was set on my going to Morehouse. He wanted me to go to Morehouse, but I couldn't leave him. I knew that would be too much of a strain on my mother, so I stayed to help her with him.
Speaker 1:And so, at Morris College, you become president of the student government.
Speaker 2:President of the student government.
Speaker 1:Now I also found the note that at one point you had an affiliation with the Congress on racial equality. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:very much, very true. I worked. I worked with mr McCain and the Congress of racial equality for several years and worked as a commando with the NAACP for several years. You know did voter voter registration with both groups.
Speaker 1:I saw several voter registration projects you did with James Blake.
Speaker 2:Right Reverend ID Quincy Newman Right, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1:Now what did that work entail? The voter education work.
Speaker 2:I basically worked rural areas in South Carolina and, for instance, like Clarendon County, building up the registration numbers, and I did it for a long time. I did it all through college.
Speaker 1:There was one incident that I want to talk in some detail about later, but if you can touch on it briefly, this morning, 1966, there is protests about the low wages of maintenance and custodians and maids at Shaw Air Force Base right and there's this young man leading that protest named Ralph Canty. Oh, is that? Right Can you tell me about what was going on at Shaw and what role you played in cultivating the protest at that time?
Speaker 2:Well, the poor people who live out in the Shaw area worked on the base and they worked for the families on the base, but their compensation was not a fair nor just compensation, and they came to the community and asked the community for help. And so we started raising the issue of a fair wage for people who worked, especially in the domestic areas out there on the base.
Speaker 1:So there was an actual strike of those workers?
Speaker 2:Yes, sort of yes, yes yes, I'm surprised you found that.
Speaker 1:I have some things to show you later about that.
Speaker 1:The last thing I want to talk to you about, to connect the dots, is last, in the summer of 2020, you and many here in Sumter were part of a mass march through the streets of this community in response to a series of incidents of police brutality around George Floyd and others, and at that time you were interviewed by some journalists and you reminded them that you have been involved in the March on Washington, the Poor People's Campaign, the Million man March, but this March was different for you in summer of 2020. Could you explain what was unique and different in 2020 that connects to your long history of struggle for civil rights?
Speaker 2:Well, I think when I made that that statement, I had become perhaps more acutely aware of how hostile law enforcement has become toward black lives and that black lives really does not matter at all, to not only law enforcement but to so many in society. So when, in the 60s, I was fighting for the privilege to do what others do with George Foreman's life, george Foreman's situation, I discovered that the new fight is about life itself, and not so much about privilege but about life, because our lives are not valued.
Speaker 1:I'll stop there, I want to thank you for your time. We've only scratched the surface of your amazing career, and so we'll plan some additional times in the future. Any final words for you as to the things that we may want to discuss in the future, or why this history—.
Speaker 2:I want to express my appreciation to you, and to the university and any others who have seen the necessity of this special work, and may history keep this story alive alive. And may those who come behind us become more committed to giving their lives to ensure that the lives of others are made better.